


they say you die twice

by waterfront



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Depression, Dreams, F/M, Importance of Names, Memory, relied on western mythology and for that i am ashamed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 14:02:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18592729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterfront/pseuds/waterfront
Summary: They say you die twice. Once, when your heart stops beating, and again when someone says your name for the last time.Killing someone is certainly one way to solve a problem, but for what Wednesday has planned, is it really enough? Wouldn't it be easier for everyone if Laura Moon just never existed? Well, that's the way the spell was supposed to work. But it doesn't (chalk it up to shitty luck), and the one man who still remembers her is the one she rather abandon to a house fire.To pay his debt to Odin, Sweeney just has to do this simple thing, but it really is just the darnedest thing, after all — no one can remember her and she's starting to quite literally disappear.





	they say you die twice

Turns out, you can be older than most cities in America and you can still get one hell of a hangover. Two thousand years and you can still get your ass kicked —

_Wait, that’s not right._

_Only a thousand years, right?_ Nah, gotta be less. Five hundred years, give or take. _What’s a century when you spend all your years the same way?_

The door to a bar he didn’t know the name of in a city he didn’t care where opened and it sounded like a gunshot going off in his head.

He would’ve groaned but his throat was far too dry. Sweeney closed his hand into a fist and felt the dried blood there crack and split. Given that only his head was fit to burst, he guessed it wasn’t his. He rolled out of the warm path of the sunlight streaming in from the open door and peeled his eyes open.

Last night flashed in pieces, a new scene cracking across his vision with every steady step of the boots wandering around the prone bodies on the floor.

_Whiskey. Lots of it. Some might even say a wee too much._

_A fire rising somewhere in his belly. Drum beats echoing through life-times._

_Gleeful joy that pressed itself into a bitter rage, with the smell of beer, salt, and oak fueling a forge none of the men around him could ever hope to understand._

_A face so punchable he didn’t know if he wanted to kiss it or break it all the way through._

Judging by the bruised knuckles, the blood in his teeth, and a satisfied balm in his chest, it had most certainly gone one way.

But no amount of bar fight victories could hold back the mounting dread from the footfalls that surrounded him. He knew those steps . . . woke up every morning waiting to hear those fuckin’ clods . . . of all days, though, he never really thought it’d be today.

“Did you maim every inbred idiot in this backwater town?” the old god asked, as he lightly stepped over the body of the bartender and helped himself to one of the remaining bottles of aged whiskey behind the bar. “And good lord, would it kill ya to offer up a prayer for little ol’ me when you decide to unleash this level of carnage?”

_Bloody fuckin’ Wednesday . . ._

The pounding ache in his head slipped like grease into his stomach the moment Sweeney tried to pull himself to his feet. He considered puking, just to give Wednesday an idea of just how he felt about all of this, but as the thought crossed his mind, the slippery sickness subsided and he sat upright. Sweeney wiped his mouth, beard and chin sticky with something now dry, cracked his neck, picked up his jacket from the floor, and eased into a barstool.

“Now, what does his great Grimnir want with an old fairy like me?”

There was an imperceptible devious twinkle in the old man’s eye as he split a two finger between two (semi)intact glasses. Wednesday, Odin, the All-Father, slid a glass with a jagged edge towards him, still smiling that inane, fucking smile that was both a “fuck you” and a “fuck that”.

“It’s not what I want, dear Sweeney. Oh, no. It’s what I can do _for you_.”

Sweeney accepted the drink, like a challenge, with a smile of his own. “Somehow, I really doubt that.” 

They clinked glasses, Wednesday still grinning like he’d eaten the canary alive. “Fine. How about I tell you a secret instead? You people like that sort of thing, don’t you?”

“Then I’d say you owe me, but we both know that ain’t true.”

“Alright, in fairness, it’s not a secret about me, per say.” Wednesday turned and looked fondly through the broken window, as if it wasn’t smeared with piss and blood. “It’s a secret about the world, really. Life. People. Those little fuckers with dreams about creating a better lot than what was given to them.”

“Cheers to fucking dreams, right?”

 Wednesday paused, glancing at Sweeney as though he just remembered the leprechaun was ever there in the first place. 

“Dreams, sure.” The glasses clinked again and when Sweeney brought the glass up, he felt a tear open his lips. _Blood and whiskey, too much like last night._ “But more importantly, I know how to make mine come true. There’s a lot to be done before it all happens, but I’ve figured out how to take care of my most present and pressing problem.”

Sweeney, headache still running a full-paced march, reached across the bar and took the bottle from Wednesday. He skipped past the two fingers and filled the chipped glass nearly to the brim. He drank slow, than finished in a single gulp. The whiskey rattled loose the pain temporarily but the gleam in Wednesday’s good eye made him wish for it ten-fold.

That fucking battle. One mistake a millennia ago, and it followed —

_No. That’s too long —_

“Look, you owe me. Let’s get that out of the way right now.” Wednesday leaned forward, his tan coat stained with some dark liquid as he settled his arms across the damp bar. “You owe me and it’s time to settle up.”

“And our settlin’s going to look a lot like me being your bitch, don’t it?”

It could have been midday, or late evening, but it didn’t matter. He could have been sober as a priest and none of it would have made a lick of difference. He never thought it would be here, or now, or even in a hundred years, truth be told. But, then again, you never really know when death comes for you. And within every bone in his very old body, he knew that is where this path ended.

“Come now, Sweeney, there’s no need to be dramatic. There is no _bitch_ in this. I just need you to do me a little favor.”

The bottle was nearly empty. The hum in his head was reaching a fever-pitch. But he still couldn’t say yes. Couldn’t say yes and strike the match and set himself ablaze. But the purity of a scorching fire was coming. Yes, he’d get what he deserved, but fuck if it didn’t send a rage through him that it would be at Wednesday’s behest.

“It’s not a nasty favor. You won’t even have to get your hands dirty. However, given the present state of things around here, it seems you might prefer that.” The old god of war gestured to the stilled chaos around them, smirking all the while. “In my very long life, I’ve found there’s more than one way to skin a cat. You can break an egg a whole lot of ways — so many in fact, you can tell Dumpty to fuck right off.”

Wednesday’s smile deepened as though he supposed he was being charming, alluring, leading another stupid lemming over a fucking cliff.

“Wednesday,” Sweeney rasped, “what the _fuck_ do you want from me?”

The god huffed as though being drastically put-upon by having his unrelenting monologue cut short. He pushed the bottle and the two glasses aside, trying to come as close to eye-level with the giant.

“I want you to remove a girl,” he said.

Sweeney snorted and smeared the blood from his lip. “What’d she do? Steal your pocket change?”

Wednesday’s eyes flashed and a bit of that ancient, ruthless, warlord leaked across the old man’s gnarled and wrinkled face.

“She’s a fucking thorn in my side. The last bit of the puzzle I can’t make fucking fit.”

“So you want me to kill this girl, this thorn?”

The mismatched blue and green met him with genuine surprise. “ _What?_ Good heavens _,_  no! We’re not savages.”  

He moved quickly around the bar, wide hand diving deep into the folds of his trenchcoat to pull out a straw hat and a small velvet, purple bag. The hat he slipped over his gray curls and the bag he dropped onto the bar. 

“Simple spell, really. Came from an old friend who, like you, owed me a favor. Instructions are in there.” He patted the Sweeney’s shoulder fondly, smiling that shit smile, before pulling out one more thing from another hidden pocket. “Her name is Laura Moon. Her address is on the back of the photo. Do this and you’re one step closer to _not_ being a shitty little coward.”  

 _Of course, it wouldn’t be that fucking easy_. Wednesday was going to drag this out until he was swinging out over the ledge, legs scrambling for purchase against stone. Since Sweeney made no motion to take the photo, the old man dropped it under his nose and he finally caught sight of the girl who had signed his death warrant.

Brown eyes. Brown hair. An unamused scowl staring up at him from what could have been a DMV photo. Didn’t seem like much. Certainly didn’t seem worth all this fucking trouble. 

Laura Moon was, in every way, unremarkable. Except for the fact she had a target on her back, set upon by the gods.

How many girls from Bumfuck, Indiana could say that? 

“Call me when it’s done.” Wednesday said, like he had just finished putting in an order for pizza.

He readjusted the straw hat and turned to go. The whisper of a whistle had just escaped his lips when Sweeney remembered something.

“What was the secret, Wednesday?”

If he gave Ms. Moon a second look, he’d say there was something missing from her. A darkness where there was meant to be light.

“Ah, yes. You do have a nose for that kind of thing.”

Sweeney turned in his seat. His back ached. His hands ached. He aimed to find the nearest and darkest motel and sleep until this hangover passed him over like the Black Death of old, but he’d be pig-fucked before he let the All-Father walk out of a room with his back turned.

There was that fucking smile again and Sweeney realized he only had minutes before he puked everywhere.

“I have come across a secret that I only wish I had known earlier,” Wednesday said, as though beginning a sermon. “Remember this, Mad Sweeney, because I will only say it once. _Silence isn’t the absence of noise_. Silence is the sound you can’t hear. True absence, on the other hand, is the total removal of the thing you want.”  

The old god shrugged, eyes gleaming, and tottered off, like the fool he often played. The door swung shut — a brief flash of gold from the outside world — and the bar was empty again.

Business finished, Sweeney stood up, swaying slightly, and violently hurled onto the floor.

 

* * *

 

She knew it was morning only because she had laid there all night watching the slatted moonlight fade from bold silver, to a pale grey, to sickly gold.

Last night had been bad. Really bad. So bad she was thumbing Shadow’s number every hour on the hour, but in the end chucked the phone into the back of her closet. Once upon a time, she might have called him— might have called to hear some reassurance, some kind words, something other than the agonizing beat of her own heart — but she was pretty sure her ex-husband (or soon to be) no longer had any kind words left for her. Not now that he and the rest of their average, middle-class, garden-party-hosting neighborhood knew what she was. What she had done.

Robbie’s name had flashed briefly on her screen around 1AM, and for the past six months that had been a stopper in a wound that had been open for as long as she could remember. But that particular well dried up when Shadow caught them in the driveway, Robbie’s cock so far down her throat, it tickled a gag reflex she didn’t think she still had. Getting caught, well, it had ruined the fun and so Robbie was done— but so was her marriage, her life, and her puppy’s heart.

Robbie called pretty much every night after he saw Laura pack up her car. Hungry, with those beady little eyes, as though someone had finally lifted ropes to an all-you-can-eat buffet. He was still living with Audrey just so (Laura guessed) she could strangle him in his sleep.

Everyone saw Laura pack up her car that hot afternoon. All her neighbors paused, freezing in their mundane tasks in their mundane lives to watch the horrendous freak go by. _Good riddance. How dare you bring that trash onto our nice Christian lawns._

Laura went to her rent-controlled apartment that night and chain-smoked on her kitchen table until four in the morning. Shadow did call, surprisingly, but by the third ring it stopped.

_Good call, Puppy._

Laura rolled onto her back and listened to her neighbor fuck his wife before they both left for work. The walls were so thin she knew there was never any foreplay, but the wife liked to be spanked. A lot and hard. Bits of plaster fluttered down from the force of the metal bed ramming against the wall behind her head and it fell like ash into her hair, on her face, on her lips. Her own bed shook with every brutal pound. 

_Was it worth it? All of it? Any of it?_

That’s what he asked her the night he found out, when he put all the pieces together, and realized the love of his life was fucking the fat next-door neighbor for shit-n-giggles. She couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt, the way he looked at her, but when she couldn’t answer his questions with any shred of truth, she said the one thing she had always considered to be true:

 _Maybe it’s just better if I’m not here._ She knew he’d never ask, or kick her out, but it was the right thing to do, a whole day late and a $100,000 short.

Inside the closet, her phone buzzed. In the apartment over, the couple had finished (the woman yowling distinctly fake orgasm) and the shower turned on. Outside, she heard a garbage truck beep.

Laura Moon, now (and perhaps always had been) Laura McCabe rolled over and willed herself to cry. At least then she could complete the pathetic tri-fucking-fecta. She squeezed her eyes shut, daring something inside of her to break, something to finally snap.

 _Even fucking babies cry when they’re born. C’mon, gimme something_.

But it was all just . . . grey.

And grey didn’t even have a taste or a sound or a feeling. Grey was a hole, an absence, because maybe nothing had ever been there in the first place. Grey was the weight holding her in bed, the ability to ignore the light of the day. Grey was coffee grounds left in the pot until they botanized. Grey was a dinner of ketchup on Cheezit crackers, swallowed down with warm white wine. It was a kitchen sink full of empty Danimal yogurt cups and rotting Spaghettios. Grey was showering only because her boss had asked her to and it was the static in her head even when the TV volume was turned up all the way. Grey was grief that festered into guilt that told her body to cry, and cry hard, but it couldn’t remember how to.

Grey . . . was Laura McCabe. 

At least with Shadow gone, there was no one to bug her about lying in bed for hours at a time. If she slept, she didn’t dream. She finally got up around two, shut the closet door, and put some coffee on. The small one room apartment quickly smelled like burnt toast so she went to the back door and lit her first cigarette of many. Outside, chain link fences creaked in the summer heat and old dogs barked and kids raced around on rusted bikes.

Her five-foot-by-five-foot patch of dead grass opened up to a side-street, the dumpster used by the nearby seafood restaurant only a few feet away. She stared at the chipped and reeking dumpster through the heat and thought about its contents _boiling_. Across the road, a black buick sat idling in the afternoon sun. 

The coffee pot beeped and Laura tossed aside her third cigarette. She got her cup and realized she hadn’t gone to the store this week. Her pantry, strikingly empty than the one Shadow had stocked at their old house, had two cans of beans, a box of Craft Mac n’ Cheese, and an opened bag of hot chocolate powder. She grabbed a spoon and went back to her porch.

In the street a game of basketball had broken out. Work began in four hours and watching kids yell obscenities seemed better than wondering how much weight her closet bar could hold or if that Sylvia Plath bitch was full of shit. Laura leaned back, trading a sip of coffee for a spoonful of chocolate powder.

The black buick across the road was gone.

 

* * *

 

The side of her baby-blue volkswagen Shadow had given to her as an anniversary present still had the word _WHORE_ etched out on it in giant keystrokes. At two AM, the dark blurred out most of it, but Laura knew it was there and had very little intention of fixing it. She shut off the car and sighed. The speed at which she would have to be going to break through the overpass barriers had again crossed her mind on the drive home from the casino.

_But who would check on Tiger, Mrs. Ramirez, if I ever did a thing like that?_

Mrs. Ramirez was the elderly widow who lived an apartment over from Laura. A nasty little shit of a woman, she had demanded Laura be the one who let her cat in at night two days after Laura moved in. At least it was better than the mind-numbing monotony of fucking yard sales.

“Tiger!” Laura called into the pitch blackness. She had pried open the window (as per Mrs. Ramirez's instructions) and waited for the tabby to appear. “Tiger, c’mon, get your fat ass inside.”

A wind blew. Dead leaves scattered and Laura rolled her eyes. She slammed the window shut.

“Fine. Fuck you, cat. Get eaten by coyotes.” 

Her feet beginning to cramp from standing so long at the blackjack tables, Laura unlocked her front door and was immediately surprised to find her living room light had already been turned on, obviously by someone else.

A stranger was bent over and digging listlessly through her refrigerator. 

“Well, fuck, how hard is it to keep a couple of fresh beers around?” 

He, the stranger, stood up to a shocking height, a mane of red hair tumbling around in curls from a faux-hawk, and seemed genuinely annoyed she didn’t have anything for him to drink. Easily a foot taller than she was, Laura wondered if this was what what fear felt like and said whatever popped into her brain.

“My husband will be home soon. You have to leave.” 

The giant snorted and took another drag from the cigarette jammed between his teeth, then plopped down at her kitchen table. “Uh, _no_ , he ain’t. Been tailin’ ya long enough to know that’s a crock of shit.”

Okay, initial shock over.

“I’m sorry, but _who the fuck_ are you? And what the fuck are you doing in my house?” 

“I’m a leprechaun,” he smiled curtly up at her, “sent by the fuckin’ god o' war who wants you dead because you’re somehow in the way of him gettin’ what he wants. And Wednesday always gets what he wants.”

Laura blinked. “Okay, nope, you gotta have your bad acid trip somewhere else, pal. Get the fuck out of my house or I’m calling the cops.” 

The stranger sighed and scratched his neck up under his ridiculous news boy cap. “Are you sure you don’t got some beer? Or a shot of whiskey? Or —,”

“ _NO._ Get out of my goddamn fucking house!”  

He rolled his eyes. “Fine, let’s get this over with.” The giant stood and pulled out a small bag from his jean pocket. He opened up the golden drawstrings and took out a small card. “You know, Laura Moon, this is really a mercy, whatever’s coming your way.”

Laura, something rising in her throat, took a step back, her hips bumping into the couch. “ _Why the fuck do you know my name?_ ”

“Oi, shut up and lemme read.” He held the card close to his big nose, eyes narrowing. “This ain’t exactly the King James English so hold ya fuckin’ horses.” 

Whatever he said next, Laura was sure she had never heard anything like it.

Then he paused, as though the house was going to come crashing down. When nothing moved, he shrugged, grabbed a handful of whatever was in the bag and blew it into her face.

White sand swirled in the air, dancing like snow in a storm. It rushed across her skin and it smelled like peppermint. Every bone in her body suddenly weighed a thousand pounds. Her skin was heavy and her eyelids drooped shut. The ground came up to meet her and she hit the floor without feeling a thing. Time slid to a standstill and as her vision blurred to black, a figure towered over her.

 “You’re already dead, dead girl,” it whispered.

 

* * *

 

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. — Mary Oliver

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> First American Gods fic! Just a couple of things:
> 
> 1) It always irritated me that Laura's (obvious) depression was written off as boredom-- you don't try to kill yourself with bug spray for the hell of it. I will hit more on it throughout this piece, so be aware. 
> 
> 2) As such, this fic will primarily be from her POV, despite the first half of this chapter. 
> 
> 3) Shout out to my beta-reader, notahotlibrarian. She will be ushering in the next generation in spectacular Harry Potter fanfic, so y'all be aware.
> 
> 4) I'm basically writing this in hopes that a) notbecauseofvictories will notice me and b) it will encourage her to "these roads will take you into your own country" fic. If you do nothing else, please close out of my fic and go read hers. I am in awe. 
> 
>  
> 
> * This piece of fiction is written to honor the God King, Lugh, in hopes that we may witness his glorious resurrection. *


End file.
